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The first two Magic Mike movies felt grounded in reality even though they were about men whose livelihoods depended on how well they could sell a fantasy. But the final chapter in this unlikely trilogy necessitates you suspend a lot of disbelief to accept much of what goes on. It also necessitates you suppress memories of how much better the first two movies were. That first requirement isn’t very hard to surrender to; the movie, which hums along nicely at nearly two hours, is never a bad time. But the second one is. Though it surges in liveliness during its suitably grand finale — a kind of kaleidoscopic, Stanley Donen-showstopping leveling up on the dance numbers this franchise has thus far given us — Magic Mike’s Last Dance surprisingly renders a colorful premise beige, and can be depended on to take for granted the hallmarks that had turned these movies into much more than just opportunities to ogle Channing Tatum and a fleet of other men who appeared similarly cut from marble.

Tatum’s Mike Lane is described as alone and adrift early on in Magic Mike’s Last Dance — characteristics befitting him when we met him a decade ago, too. Only he was more hopeful then. The dream he had had in the first film — to retire from the fairly lucrative stripping he’s very good at to open a custom-furniture business — has died. He managed to successfully launch his humble company by the time 2015’s Magic Mike XXL was released. But in Last Dance it’s been a casualty of COVID-related struggle for a while now. Now, at 40, he’s tending bar for a catering company, wondering what he’ll do next. 

Read the full review on South Sound.